By Jim Meachen
Editor, MotorwayAmerica.com

(September 10, 2019) We needed comfortable, reliable transportation to use on a 1,500-mile round trip from eastern North Carolina to north-central Tennessee for a weekend visit. While the 2019 Toyota Sienna minivan sounds like a bit of overkill for just two people, it proved to be comfortable and relatively fuel efficient transportation.

By Jim Meachen and Ted Biederman
MotorwayAmerica.com

(July 15, 2018) If you had to pick the most comfortable and economical summer road trip vehicle for four adults we think you would come to the conclusion that it's impossible to beat the 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Plug-in Hybrid minivan. The award-winning Pacifica has scads of cargo space, and gas mileage that no other minivan or mid-sized-to-large crossover could touch for a 3,400-mile 16-day sightseeing trip.

By Jim Meachen and Ted Biederman
MotorwayAmerica

(July 9, 2016) SANTA MONICA, Calif. — We headed down Santa Monica Boulevard Friday morning, took a slight jog and then drove onto the famous Santa Monica pier. Our 2,400-mile Route 66 trip was a success. We reached our destination on July 8 after starting in downtown Chicago on Thursday, June 23. A monumental drive that duplicated those of millions of motorists from 1927 until the early '70s.

By Jim Meachen and Ted Biederman
MotorwayAmerica

(July 8, 2016) As we drove the crowded streets into Pasadena on Colorado Boulevard down old Route 66 we couldn't help but think this is the same route the famed Rose Bowl parade takes every year. The Rose parade has survived for more than a century, but Route 66 has been deceased for many years, even as nostalgia for the Mother Road has grown sharply as more people make it a summer "destination."

By Jim Meachen and Ted Biederman
MotorwayAmerica

(July 7, 2016) The winding road through the Black Mountains to the old mining town of Oatman, Ariz., is the most spectacular on the entire stretch of Route 66, a winding and somewhat treacherous stretch of highway through beautiful mountain scenery. The road — unpaved for many years — proved daunting to many travelers in the '20s and '30s.

By Jim Meachen and Ted Biederman
MotorwayAmerica

(July 6, 2016) We have discovered that Arizona has perhaps the richest Route 66 history of any of the eight states it crosses. Going across the northern portion of the state, Holbrook, Winslow, Williams, Flagstaff and Kingman are all loaded with gift shops, period eating places and motels, old and in many cases deteriorating car displays mostly from the '50s, and the longest stretch of uninterrupted road on original Route 66 between Chicago and Santa Monica — 158 miles.

By Jim Meachen and Ted Biederman
MotorwayAmerica

(July 4, 2016) CAMERON, Ariz. — The Route 66 road crew took a break from traveling the old highway and headed north from Flagstaff Sunday morning toward the Grand Canyon, something we are sure hundreds of thousands of people traveling the Mother Road from the late 1920s to the early 1970s did. How can you bypass one of Mother Nature's top world attractions?

By Jim Meachen and Ted Biederman
MotorwayAmerica

(July 3, 2016) WINSLOW, Ariz. — La Posada was once a grand hotel serving high-end cliental arriving in Winslow, Ariz., on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway lines. The train depot was finished in 1929 and the hotel — owned and operated by famous hotel magnate Fred Harvey — was completed in 1930, one of the last of a series of hotel-depot complexes built across the Southwestern U.S. in a collaboration between Harvey and the railroad company.

(July 2, 2016) The Route 66 crew on Friday covered about 225 miles from Albuquerque, N.M. to Holbrook, Ariz., traveling the Mother Road as much as possible, but missing great swaths of old pavement that were lost when Interstate 40 was paved over top of the old road in 1972 and 1973. But we had enough rolling two-lane left to get the real flavor of what it was like to travel through New Mexico from the 1930s through the 1960s.